How could it have happened?
This week mouthpieces of the Democratic Party have attacked the Bush Administration for criminal negligence in the matter of 380-odd tons of chemical explosive said to be missing from a former Iraqi weapons depot.
The agile mind will immediately inquire: how could this have happened? Bearing in mind that we "know" the 380 tons is "missing" because of a letter sent to the IAEA by Dr. Rashad Omar, minister of science and technology in the interim Iraqi government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, here's one scenario. . .
Here's the good Dr. Omar, just appointed, just moved into his office. He sweeps out the broken glass, tries to figure out where he can get a couple of chairs that have all four legs, maybe a Mr. Coffee. . .he looks gloomily over at the eighteen big file cabinets delivered this morning, stuffed with twelve years of water-stained documents left over from his predecessor in the Hussein government, half of which are certainly outrageous lies prepared by panicked government flunkies afraid to tell Saddam something he didn't want to hear. All delivered this morning -- a Tuesday morning -- by someone from Allawi's office who said, better get cracking on this, doc, the PM is going to want a complete report before his Cabinet meeting Friday.
So then the phone rings. It's the PM himself. Hey, Omar, how's it hanging? All moved in? Need anything? Yeah, well, we've got to send out for our coffee, and half the time it's cold before it gets back anyway. Listen, I just got a call from some fussbudget at the IAEA. Says he needs to close the books out on mumble mumble pounds of dual-use high explosives they were monitoring out at al-Qaqaa. Sure, I realize we've got far bigger fish to fry than doing a meticulous post-mortem on Saddam's nuke program. But we don't want to offend these folks, you know? We may need them later. So can you just tell me where the stuff is now? Confirm it's still out there, still safe? Just give me the building number, maybe a photograph or two, so I can tell them it's still under lock and key, and they can come look at it sometimes, make sure their precious seals are still intact?
What? Well, Jesus, Omar, I'm sorry there are eighteen of them. We're all a little busy, OK? Just get me some kind of report on this Qaqaa by tomorrow morning, will you? I've got a country to run and I can't waste more time with this.
Poor Omar puts down the phone and contemplates the wall of filing cabinets. Big secret nuke-research base. Yup. Now what are the odds the paper trail left by the Saddamites is going to be all neat and complete? Oh boy, forget it.
So Omar requisitions a jeep and drives out to the place. A God-damned mess it is, too. Gigantic compound, hundreds of buildings, pits, shacks, some camouflaged, some not, some locked, some open. People he doesn't recognize wandering around, some with guns. Not clear who he'd have to get permission from to start breaking open locked doors. Bloody big hidey-hole for Saddam's techno-toys for two decades. Where to even begin? No way he can poke through this mess in 24 hours and be sure there's nothing to bite him in the ass later.
But as he trundles back to Baghdad, lighting strikes. Eureka! Everyone knows there was all that chaos and looting in the first week of the war. It was on the TV everywhere. Lots of stuff vanished! Antiquities, guns, ammo, fighter jets, WMDs, whole divisions of the Republican Guard. . .why not a little plastique? Who could doubt it? More importantly, who could blame me? Plus the added benefit of: I don't have to fling blame on the GIs (who hadn't established control yet) or the UN (who were out of the country). Everybody wins!
So poor Omar writes up his memo and sends it up the line. So sorry, it all got lost to some nameless looter, nobody's fault. After which it's dutifully passed on to the UN chair polishers, who make a neat notation in their books and get back to drawing up a detailed policy statement on who is, and isn't, the victim of genocide in Darfur.
Omar even gets a nice call from the PM: Good work, Omar, glad you were able to nail that down for me. All serene.
Except: in the middle of the night one week later, Omar sits up in a bed in a cold sweat. Wait a minute, HOW much explosive did I say just walked off in the fog of war? Mumble mumble pounds. . .divide by 2000. . .Four hundred tons? Fuck! Well, maybe no one will notice. I mean, what sensible person would even give a damn? This all has nothing to do with the pressing issues in Iraq, with rebuilding or with security (since there's already enough unexploded ordnance for a hundred years of civil war). As for terrorism, who's ever heard of a terrorist having trouble getting his hands on explosives, having to pay through the nose for it on e-Bay? It's probably even some kind of unofficial licensing test or initiation ritual, stealing the requisite bang stuff for a martyrdom operation.
Plus it all happened a year ago and nothing's happened in all that time to suggest it's a problem. Nah, only a complete moron would worry about this. . .
The agile mind will immediately inquire: how could this have happened? Bearing in mind that we "know" the 380 tons is "missing" because of a letter sent to the IAEA by Dr. Rashad Omar, minister of science and technology in the interim Iraqi government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, here's one scenario. . .
Here's the good Dr. Omar, just appointed, just moved into his office. He sweeps out the broken glass, tries to figure out where he can get a couple of chairs that have all four legs, maybe a Mr. Coffee. . .he looks gloomily over at the eighteen big file cabinets delivered this morning, stuffed with twelve years of water-stained documents left over from his predecessor in the Hussein government, half of which are certainly outrageous lies prepared by panicked government flunkies afraid to tell Saddam something he didn't want to hear. All delivered this morning -- a Tuesday morning -- by someone from Allawi's office who said, better get cracking on this, doc, the PM is going to want a complete report before his Cabinet meeting Friday.
So then the phone rings. It's the PM himself. Hey, Omar, how's it hanging? All moved in? Need anything? Yeah, well, we've got to send out for our coffee, and half the time it's cold before it gets back anyway. Listen, I just got a call from some fussbudget at the IAEA. Says he needs to close the books out on mumble mumble pounds of dual-use high explosives they were monitoring out at al-Qaqaa. Sure, I realize we've got far bigger fish to fry than doing a meticulous post-mortem on Saddam's nuke program. But we don't want to offend these folks, you know? We may need them later. So can you just tell me where the stuff is now? Confirm it's still out there, still safe? Just give me the building number, maybe a photograph or two, so I can tell them it's still under lock and key, and they can come look at it sometimes, make sure their precious seals are still intact?
What? Well, Jesus, Omar, I'm sorry there are eighteen of them. We're all a little busy, OK? Just get me some kind of report on this Qaqaa by tomorrow morning, will you? I've got a country to run and I can't waste more time with this.
Poor Omar puts down the phone and contemplates the wall of filing cabinets. Big secret nuke-research base. Yup. Now what are the odds the paper trail left by the Saddamites is going to be all neat and complete? Oh boy, forget it.
So Omar requisitions a jeep and drives out to the place. A God-damned mess it is, too. Gigantic compound, hundreds of buildings, pits, shacks, some camouflaged, some not, some locked, some open. People he doesn't recognize wandering around, some with guns. Not clear who he'd have to get permission from to start breaking open locked doors. Bloody big hidey-hole for Saddam's techno-toys for two decades. Where to even begin? No way he can poke through this mess in 24 hours and be sure there's nothing to bite him in the ass later.
But as he trundles back to Baghdad, lighting strikes. Eureka! Everyone knows there was all that chaos and looting in the first week of the war. It was on the TV everywhere. Lots of stuff vanished! Antiquities, guns, ammo, fighter jets, WMDs, whole divisions of the Republican Guard. . .why not a little plastique? Who could doubt it? More importantly, who could blame me? Plus the added benefit of: I don't have to fling blame on the GIs (who hadn't established control yet) or the UN (who were out of the country). Everybody wins!
So poor Omar writes up his memo and sends it up the line. So sorry, it all got lost to some nameless looter, nobody's fault. After which it's dutifully passed on to the UN chair polishers, who make a neat notation in their books and get back to drawing up a detailed policy statement on who is, and isn't, the victim of genocide in Darfur.
Omar even gets a nice call from the PM: Good work, Omar, glad you were able to nail that down for me. All serene.
Except: in the middle of the night one week later, Omar sits up in a bed in a cold sweat. Wait a minute, HOW much explosive did I say just walked off in the fog of war? Mumble mumble pounds. . .divide by 2000. . .Four hundred tons? Fuck! Well, maybe no one will notice. I mean, what sensible person would even give a damn? This all has nothing to do with the pressing issues in Iraq, with rebuilding or with security (since there's already enough unexploded ordnance for a hundred years of civil war). As for terrorism, who's ever heard of a terrorist having trouble getting his hands on explosives, having to pay through the nose for it on e-Bay? It's probably even some kind of unofficial licensing test or initiation ritual, stealing the requisite bang stuff for a martyrdom operation.
Plus it all happened a year ago and nothing's happened in all that time to suggest it's a problem. Nah, only a complete moron would worry about this. . .
posted by Quadraginta at 1:14 PM
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